Thursday, October 27, 2005

Comando Zorras

I mentioned Comando Zorras briefly yesterday, and I think it perhaps deserves more explanation. It was Miguel Bonilla's first movie as a director. His inexperience was showing, but he did a decent job, considering. The script was a bigger problem, written by a communications student who had learned the basics of screenwriting in a course at her school. It was not particularly good or coherent in any way, and a lot of it was changed as we were shooting anyway.

Part of what was supposed to be the movie's attractions was the casting of Paola Durante as one of the bad guys. Paola Durante was a TV hostess, or rather, window dressing, in popular comedian Paco Stanley's show. When Stanley was murdered in a drive-by shooting, she became a suspect, and spent almost two years in jail before being cleared of all charges. She's a household name in Mexico, and her infamy was seen to be good for the movie.

The story of CZ revolves around a school teacher whose student is kidnapped by Colombian Satanist drug dealers to be used as a sacrifice. Urged to find the girl by the girl's wheelchair-bound father, she receives a tip from a mysterious old man on the street, and following the tip, she ends up at a strip club. She takes a job there, gets to know the strippers, and since she's actually secretly a CIA-trained assassin, she trains the strippers in martial arts, so that they can help her recover the kidnapped girl. The Colombians are regular customers at the strip club, and so she and the other strippers end up at the drug dealers' house at the night of the sacrifice. The owner of the strip club and his bodyguard, played by Leo and me, follow them there, everyone fights everyone, the main Colombian Satanist drug dealer disappears in a cloud of smoke (literally) by use of black magic, and the girl is saved. When the teacher/CIA assassin returns the girl to the father, he is so happy he magically rises from his wheelchair and can walk again.

I can assure you that it's at least as bad as it sounds.

Shooting it was quite fun, though, the people were nice (some of them were already friends of mine, and I made several more on set), and it was a learning experience, both in what to do and what not to do. Also, filming fight scenes is a blast. Many of the smaller bad guy roles were filled by people who were martial arts teachers and the like, and they did some crazy stuff. It was especially satisfying to get to win the fights against them, of course.

For some reason, the movie took forever to edit, and I was not overly happy with the final cut, although it was probably not horrible given the material they had to work with. Also, it's unclear to me if it was released as planned or not. Last I heard it had been distributed, and was also something of a success, although I don't know if they were talking about pre-orders, or actual sales/rentals.

I think that the new movie's going to be a hell of a lot better, though. It's much better planned, the script is solid, and in general I have a better feeling about it.

I've been trying to dig up photos from the production of Comando Zorras, but I haven't been able to find any yet. There should be both movie stills and behind the scenes photos somewhere, though, so I'll keep looking.

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About Me

I'm Norwegian, but I live in Mexico City. I used to be a programmer, and at times I still am, but at the moment I'm focusing more on my passion, movies. I mainly want to write, but in the meantime I'm acting. Mexican direct to video exploitation movies always need a big white guy to cast as a heavy.